AZERBAIJAN-ARMENIA: No ‘Bosnian’ Solutions For Nagorno-Karabakh

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Mar 19 1996 (IPS) - The prospect of new fighting over the Armenian-held enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan has widened the gap between Russia and the United States, which have different views of the best route to peace in the disputed territory.

Russia is also trying to avoid a repeat of the recent Balkan peace process in which the U.S. steamrollered through a plan based on territorial exchange — a trick that Moscow fears Washington aims to repeat in Nagorno-Karabakh.

A 20-month truce was broken on Feb. 23 by a minor but ominous clash on the border of the territory of Nakhichevan, an Azeri-held enclave in Armenia which mirrors Armenian-held Nagorno-Karabakh.

Both sides blame each other for the incident in which an Azeri died, but the fact that the conflict was elsewhere than Nagorno- Karabakh itself added a new dimension to the territorial dispute.

The conflict first broke out in 1988 when all involved were citizens of the Soviet Union. Moscow first tried to bury the dispute, then claim it as an ‘internal affair’. The demise of the USSR opened it to foreign ideas, the most radical of which came from U.S. political scientist Paul Goble in the early 1990’s.

Goble suggested that Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor linking it to Armenian territory should be given to Armenia, and that Nakhichevan and the Zangezur district of Armenia, dividing Azeri territory from the Azeri enclave, be given to Azerbaijan.

The plan was dismissed by both sides and quickly forgotten after Armenia swept its tanks into Nagorno-Karabakh to seize the disputed territory and a chunk of Azeri land in 1993.

But the Goble plan is back in a ‘new and improved’ form — but this time it has been given extra weight, and apparently carries the support of Washington.

“Goble believes that there are three possible scenarios in the Karabakh conflict,” said analyst Vladimir Yemelyanenko of the weekly Moscow News. “In the first, the war continues and the Karabakh region comes up the loser.

“In the second ‘an external power’ (meaning Russia) would force its own solution – the preservation of existing borders and the creation of a Russian protectorate.”

“In the third scenario, Goble’s plan is followed and Nagorno- Karabakh goes to Armenia with the Lachin corridor, while Zangezur goes to Azerbaijan.” One new amendment to Goble’s plan gives Armenia the western part of Nakhichevan, precisely where the incident ended the armistice on Feb. 23.

Goble isn’t the only one who has made such proposals. Nelson Ledsky, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, also proposed changes to the Armenian-Azeri borders, as did Jack Mareska, former U.S. representative to the ‘Minsk Group’ of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Last week the U.S. came back in force, sending U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel Berger to meet Azeri president Haidar Aliyev for two days.

With few friends and fewer options, Aliyev welcomed the U.S. initiative, telling Russia’s Interfax agency that he had accepted the U.S. proposals “with satisfaction”. Interfax quoted a source in Aliyev’s office as saying it may entail efforts to press Armenia to make concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh if Baku gives “strong guarantees” to U.S. companies involved in Azeri oil.

“The statements of independent American experts can be seen as an indication that the White House is trying to push the sides to consider a territorial exchange,” said Ara Tatevosyan, an analyst with the Armenian news agency Armenpress in Yerevan. “If the American plan works, this would take Russia out of the long-term international oil projects in Azerbaijan,” he added.

But there is little evidence that either side will follow the U.S. plan as long as it is based around border changes.

Baku says a change of borders would violate international agreements and U.N. principles. Instead they offer the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh “broad autonomy” in return for Yerevan’s withdrawal from occupied Azerbaijan and right of return for some 1.5 million Azeri refugees now in camps in Iran and Russia.

Yerevan, sitting in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and a good chunk of Azerbaijan is not inclined to discuss swopping land in Nakhichevan for territory it holds by force in Nagorno-Karabakh.

And the current rulers of the Nagorno-Karabakh ‘republic’ argue that an autonomous Karabakh within Azerbaijan is impractical and rule out a return to Azeri authority. They also reject a ‘Bosnian’ style settlement redrawing borders to rebalance the two nations.

Azerbaijan is short on options and its only card is its oil reserves. “Azerbaijan thinks that it can use its oil pipelines to get other countries to put pressure on Armenia,” says Zhirair Liparityan, an adviser to the Armenian president.

The most dramatic use of the technique so far saw the Azeri goverment cut Iran out of a multi million dollar Caspian oil development plan and pass its share to its regional rivals, Turkey.

The result was furious. Iran and Azeribaijan’s foreign ministers traded insults in public and Iran has warmed to Armenia since.

However Azerbaijan clearly sees more hope in the U.S. option and freezing out Iran is an unspoken precondition of U.S. support. And Iran is not abandoning Azeribaijan totally.

“The Karabakh problem,” Iranian foreign minister Ali Akhbar Velayati told Radio Armenia, “must be solved on the basis of agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in a just and honourable way, with the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Azeri territory.”

Armenia can afford to wait. There is no chance of a effective Azeri counter-attack on the battlefield, while its occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and some 20 percent of Azeri territory has hardly affected Armenia’s growing international status.

In February Armenia received an initial instalment of 25 million dollars on a total possible loan facility of 148 million from the International Monetary Fund; in March the World Bank approved a credit of 63.8 million dollars for Armenia, latest in a total of credits worth 260 million to Yerevan in the last two years.

Any final result will be down to the main players, the U.S. and Russia — who are, in the dry words of one observer, “secretly competing for the peacemakers’ world cup”.

Russian president Boris Yeltsin has ordered the convening of a grand summit of Caucasian leaders, including minority and breakaway group leaders in Vladikavkaz in May — to tackle first of all the Chechen crisis but also the problem of Nagorno- Karabakh.

Yet both sides approach the problem from opposite directions.

Moscow seeks preservation of existing borders and ‘improved status’ for Nagorno-Karabakh, a solution that would give Russia a chance to increase its influence in the region. Washington backs a re-division of borders that is neat and practical in terms of maps but far more complex in terms of real people.

And as long as all sides continue to resist border changes, this time round the U.S. peacemaking bulldozer will not clear the path as rapidly as it did in Dayton for Bosnia-Hercegovina.

“The Kremlin’s peacemaking role in Bosnia turned out to be symbolic,” said Alexei Pushkov, a top Russian TV analyst. “In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Russia has a chance, as all the parties involved are opposed to changes in borders.”